Chapter 78: Huntelaar
Sunday.
Mateo was up before five, did his usual workout, ate breakfast alone in the hotel restaurant at seven-thirty when the kitchen opened. By nine the squad was moving, light activation session in the car park, nothing demanding, just bodies waking up properly.
The Partner Card decision had made itself sometime in the night.
He'd gone to sleep leaving it open and woken knowing the answer. Raúl. Not because Farfán wouldn't benefit, he would, and had, in Hannover. But Raúl at the lone striker position against a side who had been studying Schalke for a week was the highest-leverage choice. Werder would have watched Frankfurt. They would have identified Raúl as the primary threat and probably assigned Mertesacker — the taller, more physical of the two centre-backs to mark him. With a 20% boost, Raúl's first movement would be faster than Mertesacker's anticipation of it. His finishing would be even sharper than what Werder had seen on film.
He confirmed the binding in the tunnel.
Raúl, standing beside him waiting for the teams to walk out, blinked once, the tell Mateo had learned to watch for. He flexed his right hand at his side, slow and deliberate, then looked straight ahead.
He said nothing. He'd decided not to ask again.
The teams walked out into the Weser Stadium.
The noise was different here from Frankfurt.
Forty-two thousand people in a ground that sat close to the pitch, the stands steep, the roof enclosing the sound, the effect being that the crowd felt physically nearer than the architecture suggested. The Werder supporters were singing before the teams had finished their introductions, the specific voice of a home crowd confident in their ground and their form. Three wins and a draw from four matches. Unbeaten.
Mateo walked out onto the pitch and let the noise settle into the background where it belonged.
He found his position and looked at the Werder shape — the 4-3-3 setting up across from him, Bargfrede in the single DM slot, Hunt and Frings flanking him. Pizarro at the point of the attack, still finding his position in the slow pre-kickoff shuffle of a striker who had done this ten thousand times and didn't need to rush.
Pizarro looked at him briefly. Not a challenge, the professional assessment of a veteran who had been told by his coach which players to look out for.
Mateo looked back, then looked at the midfield spaces.
Werder won the coin toss and kicked off.
Thomas Schaaf's opening plan was visible from the first possession. Werder built slowly — no rush, no early press, the ball cycling through the back four and into midfield at a deliberate pace. Bargfrede sitting deep, Hunt and Frings finding the wide areas, Pizarro positioning himself between Metzelder and Höwedes without receiving anything yet. The intention was tempo control: set the pace, make Schalke react rather than initiate, wear down the press before committing forward.
Hunt received in the centre circle and looked up. Hunt was 24, faster in transition than Zavilas had been, less patient in possession.
Hunt turned and drove forward immediately.
Mateo stepped across to contest. Hunt had the ball on his right foot and kept his body between it and the press — good technique, reading the close well. He waited for Mateo's weight to commit then nudged it left, turned through the space Mateo's momentum had vacated.
The pass went to Frings wide.
Mateo turned and tracked back. He hadn't expected to win that challenge — Defence 61 against an experienced Bundesliga midfielder was a contest he was simply going to lose sometimes. The point was to slow, to force the choice, to buy Jones and Per Kluge half a second.
Jones was already moving to cut the next option off.
Frings played it back to Bargfrede, who reset. Werder reorganised into their shape, took the ball wide right, and the sequence ended without danger.
Tom Warrick, in the EuroSport booth at the top of the east stand: "Werder opening slowly, controlling the tempo. Schaaf won't want his side to be drawn into an open game — their strength is the organised press and the counter through Pizarro. Patient start from the home side."
The sequence that produced the goal started seconds after Werder's sixth possession of the match.
Frings received wide and looked to play it inside, the same central channel Werder had been probing since the kickoff. Bargfrede was making the run to receive, and the intention was to drive through Mateo's zone again.
Per Kluge read it.
He stepped across the line, got his foot to the pass before it reached Bargfrede, and redirected it immediately — one touch, no hesitation — to Mateo who had already moved.
Mateo had dropped three metres deeper than his usual position. The calculation: if Bargfrede is making the central run, his recovery is going the wrong direction when the ball turns over. Per Kluge just needed to find the angle in time.
He had.
Mateo took it on the half-turn, Bargfrede arriving a stride too late.
The overlay lit immediately.
Jones was to his right — Mateo's first option, the safe recycle. Raúl was moving centrally, Mertesacker tracking, the gap between them shifting as both players adjusted. And to the left, a red line, 89%, to a space opening behind Werder's right-back position.
It lasted roughly one and a half seconds.
He struck it.
Outside of his left boot, the ball curving away from Bargfrede's recovery run, moving fast and low across the pitch toward the space in the left channel, to the space, to whoever was going to arrive there.
It was Huntelaar.
He'd made the diagonal run from the left wing position the moment Frings had played the pass, reading the sequence before Mateo had the ball, trusting that a red-line opportunity would open on the left side if Mertesacker went with Raúl and the right-back didn't hold. He arrived in the channel at full speed, collected the pass in one stride, and was past the last defender before Wiese had made his decision.
Wiese came off his line. Huntelaar waited — one extra step, finding the right angle — and drove it low and hard to the goalkeeper's left.
SWISH!
Fweet—!
1–0. 7th minute.
The Weser Stadium went quiet in the way that large stadium crowds went quiet when something happened that they hadn't prepared for, not silence exactly, but the sharp subtraction of forty thousand voices simultaneously trying to understand what they'd just seen.
Huntelaar was already running. He ran to Mateo in the centre circle, which was not the direction players usually ran after scoring, they ran to the crowd, to the corner flag, to the bench. He came to Mateo with the specific energy of a striker who had scored from a pass that had made the goal look easier than it was.
He stopped in front of him, held his gaze for a moment, and then knelt on one knee.
He motioned at Mateo's right boot.
Mateo stood there.
"Huntelaar," he said.
Huntelaar maintained the position. His teammates were arriving — Raúl, Farfán from back position, Pliatsikas. The full Schalke group converging on this specific point on the Weser Stadium pitch.
"You're kneeling on grass," Mateo said.
"To shine them," Huntelaar said, from one knee, entirely without irony.
Raúl arrived and put both hands on Mateo's shoulders from behind. "Let him," Raúl said quietly. "It's the best pass you've played. He wants to say thank you."
Mateo looked at Huntelaar. At the knee on the grass. At the forty-two thousand people in the stands who were just beginning to find their noise again — confused, excited, the home crowd's uncertainty converting into the reluctant acknowledgement that something worth watching had happened on their pitch.
He let it happen.
Huntelaar mimed the shoe-shine with both hands, a long sweeping motion, and the Schalke players piled in around them.
In the away section — small, few hundred people, a contingent that had made the trip from Gelsenkirchen, the noise that went up was entirely disproportionate to the number of people producing it.
On the touchline, Magath watched the celebration with his arms folded and his expression carefully controlled.
The pass had been, he had been watching Schalke's matches from a tactical analysis perspective for years, and the pass had been the most precisely judged delivery he had seen in the current season. Not the technique alone, the technique was exceptional, but the decision. The timing. The fact that the gap opened for few seconds and Mateo had identified it, weighted the delivery, and executed it in the same motion without a controlling touch.
Beside him, Hughes Yves said: "7th minute."
"I know."
He watched Huntelaar stand up and join the group, watched Mateo's expression in the middle of it — present, slightly uncomfortable with the attention, already tracking back to formation as the referee prepared the restart.
He thought about the press conference and what he was going to say about a pass like that. He thought about the buyout clause.
Then he put those thoughts away and focused on the match.
Werder were about to come back at them. Schaaf would adjust. The first goal was good. But the remaining half was what mattered.
Fweet—!
Werder kicked off.
Plz Drop Some Power Stones.
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